Novel mAbs reveal potent co-stimulatory activity of murine CD27

Members of the tumor necrosis factor receptor (TNFR) family are emerging as important molecules implicated in the regulation of proliferation, differentiation and survival of T and B lymphocytes. Among these receptors is CD27, the function of which has thus far only been studied in the human system, where it amplifies the T cell proliferative response induced by TCR triggering. We report here the generation of mAbs to murine CD27, by an efficient method involving the use of transfected Armenian hamster fibroblasts. Previous analysis had already indicated that murine CD27 mRNA is uniquely expressed in lymphoid cells. As determined with one of the newly developed antibodies, murine CD27 is expressed on the great majority of both alpha beta and gamma delta T lymphocytes, on a small population of peripheral B cells, and on a very small subset of B220+ cells in the bone marrow. This distribution largely corresponds to that in the human system. However, unlike human CD27, which is primarily expressed in mature, medullary thymocytes, murine CD27 is found on all thymocytes, except a subset of CD4-CD8- precursors. Upon cross-linking, anti-CD27 mAb amplified the proliferative response of purified T lymphocytes to suboptimal stimulation with concanavalin A at least 4-fold. This indicates that such mAbs can mimick ligand binding and demonstrates that CD27 also acts as a potent co-stimulatory molecule in the murine system.